"I was just talking about your fine preaching," said Evan.
"I admit my gift," said the minister; "but I fear that I very often preach to a deaf adder which stops its ears." He nodded triumphantly at us, and it then occurred to him to shake hands.
Evan said at once that he got a better sleep in kirk on Sundays than he got during the whole of the week.
"Evan Sinclair," said the minister, "if I find you sleeping under me I'll denounce you from my pulpit, as a minister has the right to do."
"And we'll settle it in the graveyard afterwards," said Evan dryly. "And ye're not in very good training, my man."
Palestrina broke in gently to discuss a theological point which had puzzled us for several Sundays. On each Lord's Day as it came round we had prayed that we might become "a little beatle to the Lord." Doubtless the simile is a beautiful one, but its immediate bearing upon our needs was not too grossly evident. And it seemed almost dangerous to those who believe in the efficacy of prayer to put up this petition in its literal sense. We had decided for some time past that we should ask Mr. Macorquodale what it was exactly for which we made petition, when we prayed that we might become "a little beatle to the Lord."
"Similes," said Palestrina in her serious way, "are beautiful sometimes, but we can't quite understand one of the references that you make in your prayers on Sundays."
"We have prayed so fervently," said Mrs. Fielden, "without perhaps entirely understanding the portent of the petition, that we might become 'a little beatle to the Lord.'"
The thing was out now, and our curiosity, we hoped, would be gratified. There was a pause which suggested that our hearers were puzzled, and then Mr. Sinclair put a large pocket-handkerchief into his mouth and roared with laughter, and Mr. Macorquodale turned to my sister, who was trembling now, and remarked in an awful voice that he wondered that we didn't understand plain English.
Of course she apologized, and an explanation came afterwards from Evan Sinclair, who told us that the minister's prayer was that we—the church—might become a little Bethel, and that Beethel was his Doric pronunciation of the word.